How hard is it to identify the ‘roid user?

Is Roger Clemens Seeking a Pardon? – MLB FanHouse — FYI

Way back in February, a lawyer for Brian McNamee made headlines when he said that he thought Roger Clemens would escape any criminal prosecution for perjury by receiving a presidential pardon. Clemens is friendly with the former President Bush, as he mentioned during Congressional hearings, and the feeling was that relationship could pay off with a reprieve.

Now that the current President Bush is nearing the end of his term, traditionally an occasion for numerous pardons, Clemens’ name is again coming up in discussions of potential pardon recipients. An Associated Press article mentions him alongside people like former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, American Taliban member John Walker Lindh and imprisioned financier Conrad Black when discussing who might get pardoned.

Both Lindh and Black have applied for pardons, according to the article, while there’s no evidence that Clemens has done so. He’d need to do so before the President could issue a pardon. It doesn’t matter that he hasn’t been convicted of any crime, see Ford’s pardon of Nixon, but if he did apply for one and get it, there would be a major caveat.

Ok, maybe it’s not from Noah’s Ark. And sure, it’s probably not even wood. But you can check out the full picture from NASA’s site here and make up your own mind.

Robert Ballard became famous as the explorer who found the wreckage of the Titanic. But what most people don’t know about that expedition is that Ballard also secretly worked with the U.S. Navy to learn more about two lost nuclear submarines.[the Thresher and the Scorpion. The only two subs ever lost by the Navy during peacetime.]

Ballard shared that nugget when he came to the Tampa Bay area last week for the Coastal Cities Summit, organized by the University of South Florida and other institutions. He spoke with the St. Petersburg Times about the Titanic and his underwater exploration career.

When you wanted to search for the Titanic, did you make an arrangement with the military?

I can only tell you now because they declassified this a few months ago. The Navy was not interested in the Titanic. … I mean, they funded the technology because it had so many military applications. And I was a naval intelligence officer for 30 years, and so I did a lot of missions for the Navy. Many remain classified, my best stuff. Rats …

Yes, the Titanic was a cover for a series of military operations.

First under-reported mention of this found here.

Found by Aric Mackey.

Toronto Sun – Saturday, November 29, 2008

OTTAWA – Researchers say they have located the world’s oldest stash of marijuana, in a tomb in a remote part of China.

The cache of cannabis is about 2,700 years old and was clearly “cultivated for psychoactive purposes,” rather than as fibre for clothing or as food, says a research paper in the Journal of Experimental Botany.

The 789 grams of dried cannabis was buried alongside a light-haired, blue-eyed Caucasian man, likely a shaman of the Gushi culture, near Turpan in northwestern China.

The extremely dry conditions and alkaline soil acted as preservatives, allowing a team of scientists to carefully analyze the stash, which still looked green though it had lost its distinctive odour.